One of the City of London’s best-regarded bankers, Ian Hannam, had a fierce reputation as a natural resources dealmaker with a taste for adventure at JP Morgan Cazenove.

A former soldier who joined the UK’s Territorial Special Air Service when he was 17 as part of a part-time regiment known as the Artists Rifles, Hannam has never lost his spirit for adventure.

He visited Afghanistan last year to scout out resource opportunities in the war-torn nation, taking with him two other former special forces soldiers who had quit military life for investment banking.

He and his team have also visited other far-flung nations gripped by conflict, including Iraq, Sierra Leone and the Congo, Fortune said.

However, Hannam was today caught up by the Financial Services Authority, which said it had decided to fine him £450,000 for market abuse. He has appealed the fine to the Upper Tribunal, where it could be either upheld, varied or cancelled. However, he has resigned from the bank, arguing the appeal was an “unfair distraction” to clients and colleagues.

Hannam is mainly known as a doyen of the mining industry with a contacts book that reads like a Who’s Who of oligarchs, gem miners and billionaires.

He has played a role in some of the biggest mining deals of the past decade. He helped to float mining heavyweights BHP Billiton, Vedanta and Xstrata on the London market and was most recently named as an adviser to the latter on its $90bn merger with Glencore.

As chairman of equity capital markets at JP Morgan Cazenove – which is Xstrata’s corporate broker – Hannam has been a key relationship banker for the mining giant’s chief executive Mick Davis. He helped Xstrata to first sell shares in 2002 and he advised on its $18.1bn acquisition of Canadian nickel producer Falconbridge in 2006.

However, not all his deals have ended smoothly. According to a Wall Street Journal blog, he also advised a group of Omani investors on a takeover attempt of Dow Chemical, holding secret meetings for them with two Dow executives at a luxury hotel on the bank of the Thames. When Bill Winters, who was then co-chief executive of JP Morgan, realised the board of Dow Chemical did not even know about the potential buyout, and that it would not lend the deal support, he immediately ended the bank’s involvement. http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2008/06/03/banking-ethics-202-jp-morgan-and-dow-chemical/

Hannam has been associated with the bank for around two decades, after joining merchant bank Robert Fleming in 1992, which was acquired by Chase Manhattan in 2000. Chase Manhattan bought JP Morgan in 2000. He then played a role in the merger of JP Morgan with the blue-blooded British broker Cazenove. In 2004, Hannam helped to create the joint venture between JP Morgan and Cazenove, which preceded the full merger in 2009.

There had been press speculation that he would leave JP Morgan Cazenove in the past, after he was looked over for the top job at Cazenove in 2008 when former Barclays finance director Naguib Kheraj was named chief executive.

Before Robert Fleming, Hannam worked for Salomon Brothers, where he helped build the bank’s capital markets business. Prior to a career in investment banking he had been a chartered engineer for building firm Taylor Woodrow.

A life-long supporter of Millwall football club, Hannam was born in 1956 and raised in Bermondsey, south London.

He holds an MBA from the London Business School and a degree in civil engineering from Imperial College.